


Eurydice's Vow

by crescentmoontea



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, background akeshu (blink and you'll miss it)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentmoontea/pseuds/crescentmoontea
Summary: But the very point of performing the Great Seal rendered such a fantasy impossible: no matter how much Minato missed him, Nyx’s avatar was at the top of the list of celestial beings who were absolutely not allowed to cross its boundary. Really, Minato wasn’t sure how Ryoji even got away withtalkingto him, what loophole in the cosmic rules he’d found that allowed his voice to rouse Minato’s consciousness and embrace it.//Minato and Ryoji experience [redacted]'s reality.Spoiler warning for P5R third semester.
Relationships: Arisato Minato/Mochizuki Ryoji, Mochizuki Ryoji/Persona 3 Protagonist, Mochizuki Ryoji/Yuuki Makoto
Comments: 53
Kudos: 135





	1. seven years later

Transforming his body and soul into the Great Seal was decidedly less deadly than Minato anticipated -- more of a languid reinterpretation of consciousness than a total loss of it. Mostly, he slept; his surroundings, when he was awake to take them in, didn’t look so much as they felt like squinting into the sun: a soft metallic sear across the ghosts of his closed eyelids, a moat of soupy heat around the imprecise bounds of his awareness. From every direction, there was a hum, an effervescent buzz of shapeless babble that consumed Minato’s senses, refracted them through a prism and spit them back out as one opaque beam. 

The sole exception was one clear voice--Ryoji's voice--beckoning Minato from somewhere outside the Seal, cutting through the leaden murmur to tell tales without endings, ask questions without answers, and whisper tender compliments when his energy ran low. Whenever Ryoji spoke, Minato jolted awake, fully awake, and tried to call out with his mind, hoping he sounded like the same Minato that Ryoji knew when they were alive, not some booming omnipresence shaking the galaxy. And he sometimes caught himself making wishes on stars he couldn’t see, mostly for that ridiculous yellow scarf to suddenly appear, fluttering in the nonexistent breeze of the void; for his body to return so he could catch it and pull, until the man wrapped up in the silken fabric fell into his arms. 

But the very point of performing the Great Seal rendered such a fantasy impossible: no matter how much Minato missed him, Nyx’s avatar was at the top of the list of celestial beings who were absolutely not allowed to cross its boundary. Really, Minato wasn’t sure how Ryoji even got away with _talking_ to him, what loophole in the cosmic rules he’d found that allowed his voice to rouse Minato’s consciousness and embrace it. But it was _Ryoji_. He always had been an expert at bending the rules without ever actually breaking them. To Minato, he was a marvel and a gift, a treasure that made him lament all the smiles he held back when he still had lips to quirk and bend--

“Mina! Minaminamina! Are you awake?”

Minato didn’t go by any nicknames when he was alive; he wasn’t sure when or why Ryoji had started calling him Mina, only knew it was sometime after time lost its linearity, after they figured out they could talk to each other from their respective nulls. Minato liked it immediately but protested it often, refusing to play along until Ryoji threatened to come up with new and terrible alternatives every time he called out. Given Ryoji's unceasing creativity and complete lack of shame, Minato quickly relented. 

When he was alive, Minato kept most of his words to himself, let them flit and hover like hummingbirds caged in his mouth. Silence suited him; people always took what they needed from his expressions and otherwise left him alone -- except for Ryoji. He was relentless, unflappable, disgustingly dedicated to drawing not just words but full damn _sentences_ from Minato’s mouth, sometimes even finishing them himself in his energetic impatience. The first time _that_ happened was revolutionary; never before had someone known Minato well enough to look at him and see the thoughts he was holding inside. Not even Aigis, who was arguably the closest thing Minato had to a living family member on Earth, could do that. It left Minato reeling, stewing in the excited pops of his heartbeat long after the conversation ended.

“Five more minutes,” Minato whined, as though such a request still held meaning. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Half past eternity, quarter to the Big Bang!” Ryoji responded brightly.

“I meant in--”

“--their reality? It’s 9:30 PM on Christmas Eve and our little protégés are fighting a god.”

Ryoji claimed he could see anything on Earth, so when they talked, he spent a lot of the time telling stories. He kept Minato up-to-date on the lives of their friends from Gekkoukan; when another group of Persona users appeared in Japan, Ryoji lost his mind with excitement over their investigations into a series of small-town murders. Next came the stories he claimed were from Nyx herself, about groups of Persona users who’d come before S.E.E.S. and fought the kinds of gods from which even she quailed (if his embellishments were to be believed). And then the current group appeared, calling themselves the Phantom Thieves, fighting for social reform in Tokyo one stolen heart at a time, and even Minato found himself enthralled in their story.

Truthfully, Minato didn’t understand how Ryoji was able to look down into their reality at all, let alone able to see things happening in cities he’d never even visited; he sometimes wondered if the other Persona users were stories made up to entertain him. There was always one Minato-esque wildcard leading the groups, which seemed a little _too_ convenient, and none of them ever overpowered Minato himself, which struck him as a sweet but obvious bias on Ryoji’s part. Even so, Minato chose to believe him; it was comforting to imagine that his continued adherence to the Seal wasn’t just keeping Nyx and Erebus from ending the world, but was enabling other empty-souled wildcards to fill their hearts with bonds, to seek and find their own answers, too-- 

“I don’t care,” Minato lied, the familiar words no longer truthful, but still extremely effective at riling Ryoji up. “And they’re not our protégés.”

“You do so care! Don’t be grumpy,” Ryoji whined. “It’s been so long since we got to watch a wildcard fight a god! And Ren’s ultimate persona is about go _insane_!”

There was no other being in the whole of the universe who could get so _excited_ over the very thing that had eternally locked away his own fledgling humanity. Minato would never admit it out loud, lest Ryoji’s ego grow large enough to reach the Seal and burst it by itself, but he marvelled at just how lucky he’d been, to have landed that being as his sort-of, kind-of, outside-of-reality soulmate. Sealmate? Sealed-away-mate? Whatever. Minato wasn’t too sure which words really fit what he and Ryoji had; maybe none did. Maybe what they had was outside the bounds of spacetime and language. 

Maybe that was okay. 

“I don’t get to watch,” Minato said in a final attempt at obstinance. 

“Don’t worry, Mina! Ryoji’s here, fully committed to being your color commentator, your play-by-play analyst, your referee and your sideline reporter! Now guess which god they’re fighting!”

Minato sighed, trying to remember who Ryoji claimed had shown up before. “Well, Izanami-no-Okami can’t be back already, right?”

“Nope! Guess again!” Ryoji demanded; Minato imagined him shaking his head, grinning and tossing his scarf over his shoulder. 

“Who was the one from Nyx’s stories? Nyarlathotep?”

“Not him either. It’s Yaldabaoth! The god of control! And Mina, he was masquerading as your friend Igor _this whole time_!” Ryoji exclaimed, little hiccupping pauses worming their way between his syllables like he was jumping from one foot to the other. 

“Masquerading as Igor?” Minato tried to ask, but Ryoji had already moved on, spouting off an exuberant, if disjointed, description of a spell one of the Phantom Thieves had cast earlier in the fight. Something to do with psychokinesis, apparently; Minato would have loved to play around with that. He was talking so fast it was hard to keep up with the story, so Minato stopped trying, let himself feel the velvet brush of Ryoji’s words and languish in the glow of their eternal bond. 

For the brief time that Ryoji existed as a human, he had a hunger for life that defied the coffins on Thanatos’ back. It baffled and fascinated Minato, watching him relish everything from the games in the arcade to the view from the school roof to the autumn leaves in Kyoto. He was flagrantly, recalcitrantly joyful in a way Minato had never experienced but could somehow feel through him, as if the creases of Ryoji’s smiles reclined into his own jawline before they faded. It made him crave being taken by the hand and dragged on ridiculous adventures, made him daydream during class instead of just sleep. 

But there was always something else chained underneath Ryoji's enlivened rebellion, a mournful elegy beneath the melody of his spoken words. Minato knew it like he knew the orphic hymns of his heart, recognized its tune but couldn’t remember its source until the night they found Ryoji with Aigis on the Moonlight Bridge. As Ryoji shook from the release of amnesia’s grip, so too did Minato remember that it was possible for a soul to become a seal; as Ryoji passed out beneath the green moon of the Dark Hour, the sunken cavern in Minato’s chest where Ryoji was once imprisoned collapsed, too. 

When he returned for his final visit on New Year’s Eve, face hollow, skin pallid, he begged Minato to kill him, showed him his Appriser form while swearing it would be among the things Minato forgot; it was the moment Minato realized he was in love with him. After compressing the undulating shadows back into his human body, Ryoji turned to Minato, baring his throat for the blade of a knife; instead, Minato kissed him. For a moment, Ryoji froze, then took Minato’s face in his hands and kissed him back, tender and bittersweet. Defiance never felt so soft; spitting in the face of fate never felt so sweet. Minato wrapped his arms around Ryoji’s shoulders and kissed him again and again, took as many as he could for as long as he was allowed, before letting Ryoji lead him by the hand back downstairs to talk with the rest of S.E.E.S.--

“The god of control, huh?” Minato said, laughing a little as he reclined against whatever plane of existence supported his faltering consciousness. “For a wildcard, that sounds almost--” 

“--too easy! I know!” Ryoji exclaimed in that bell-toned chime that Minato knew meant he was beaming. “There’s no way they’ll lose now! All of Shibuya is cheering for them!”

“But I thought last time they were worried everyone was forgetting them? Why are they cheering now?” Minato asked.

“They were,” Ryoji said impatiently, “but after they faded out of existence, it was everyone’s voices that brought them back. Keep up, Mina!”

Minato couldn't. Sometimes he had more energy; sometimes he could talk to Ryoji for the equivalent of hours, let him narrate entire palace infiltrations, or the adventures around Tokyo that Ren went on when everyone else’s eyes were off him, the dates he went on with his rival who was planning to kill him. _Is it a wildcard thing, being wholly incapable of fearing death?_ Minato wondered aloud after Ryoji recounted Ren’s first time kissing Akechi, how he pressed him against the wall in a Kichijoji alley before heading home to plan his escape from Akechi’s looming trap; Ryoji had laughed and said it was just one more reason he was rooting for them.

“I can’t,” Minato said through a sigh. “Too tired. You’ll have to tell me the rest--”

“--next time. Okay.” Ryoji’s voice got softer, lost its gallop behind the whir of the eternal hum. “Goodnight, sleepy Mina. I’ll miss you.”

***

Minato woke up with a tangle of heavy covers pulled over his head. He pushed them down until bright sunlight flooded his eyes, arched his back against the mattress, and stretched his arms until his fingertips brushed the silk of Ryoji’s scarf. 

_Why did he wear that thing to bed?_ Minato wondered for a drowsy moment, before choking on the cold pang of fear that seized his throat, leaping out of bed and scrambling across the room. The _room_. He was in an actual, enclosed room with gravity and a floor, a floor that looked like wispy clouds but felt like splintering lumber; every step he landed ricocheted through the soles of his feet and rattled his bones. 

His bones--

He had _bones_ \--

He had bones and muscles and skin; he’d been sleeping in a bed next to a similarly human-looking Ryoji who was _inside the Great Seal_ \--

 _Mirror_ , Minato thought, _need a mirror_ , and one unfurled like a tapestry over the length of the translucent white-brick wall. Minato ran to it and stared at himself, patted down his ribcage and gawked at his outstretched hands, took in the impossible sight of the body he’d apparently been given back. He looked older, taller, although his posture was no less terrible; his blue hair had grown thicker, but it fell in the same heavy swoop across his right eye. He wore loose black pajama pants that pooled at his ankles; lazy muscles climbed up his bare chest and down his arms. He looked human, wholly alive and tangible. 

And Ryoji--

“Wake up!” Minato shouted, watching him stir in the reflection of the mirror. “Ryoji, what--”

“--year is it?” Ryoji mumbled, eyes still closed as he hugged a pillow to his chest. “2017. January 1st, 2017. Happy new year, Mina!”

2017\. 

He’d been performing the Seal for _seven years_ \--

“Ryoji!” Minato shouted again, frantic and ragged. “Not what I was going to ask!”

“Why are you yelling?” Ryoji asked, crawling out of bed and rubbing at his eyes. “You never yell.” 

Minato watched helplessly as Ryoji, clad in matching black pajama pants and that damn yellow scarf, made his way across the room. He’d gotten taller, too; Minato still only came up to his chin. His hair was still spiky and arms still skinny, his face still as moon-shaped as Minato remembered. He looked so real, but he had to be an apparition, had to be some kind of trick or temptation from Nyx or some other malevolent force. He couldn’t actually _be there_ or the Seal would already be breaking. Both Ryoji and Minato had given up their humanity, untwined their souls and offered up their mortal lives; they were never supposed to be together again--

“Ryoji,” Minato said again, weaker, gaping as Ryoji came to stand behind him, looked in the mirror and started to smile before recognition scrambled across his face. 

“Mina?” he whispered. “Oh my god, Mina, how is--”

“--this happening? I have no idea.” Minato stared at Ryoji’s reflection, watched as his eyes went wide and glassy, traced their frantic sweep over the room, over Minato, over the room again and Minato again. “I hoped you knew.”

Ryoji shook his head, a tiny, stifled motion like he was afraid to loosen up too much air in Minato’s direction, let alone step any closer. “The last thing I remember was the stars after I stopped watching the Phantom Thieves.”

“Did the God of Control take over?” Minato asked. “Did he break the Seal?”

Ryoji didn’t answer right away; his gaze started moving again, trailing up and down Minato’s spine. “Wow, Mina, you look _breathtaking_.”

“Ryoji!” Minato sputtered with horror as he watched his own face betray him, turning bright red like it never, ever used to do when he was alive. “Focus. The wildcard. Ren. Did he lose after I fell asleep?”

“No,” Ryoji answered, closing his eyes. “He won.”

Minato waited, recognizing the shaky, deep breaths and the intense look of concentration on Ryoji’s face. It was the same thing he did just before transforming into his Appriser form on New Year’s Eve. But it was strange -- he’d told the stories of their old reality so effortlessly from the void. Had something changed now that he was inside the Great Seal? Was Minato’s inability to look back blocking Ryoji from watching, too? 

“I can’t see much. It’s really fuzzy and crackled,” Ryoji said finally. “I think I feel someone in Yaldabaoth’s place, but I can’t tell anything beyond that.”

Minato couldn’t quite remember the particulars of the Phantom Thieves’ journey--he’d slept through most of it, not to mention Ryoji was an enthusiastic but _extremely_ unreliable narrator--but even so, he was pretty damn sure _that_ wasn’t supposed to happen. 

“Wait. There’s another god?”

“Maybe.” Ryoji opened his eyes and shook his head again, a little faster, drawing an arc that was a little bit wider and a little more frantic. “But whatever it is, they’ve done something to the Sea of Souls. I can’t sense Erebus anymore, and I can’t hear the people--”

“--calling for Nyx,” Minato murmured, cognizance sparking against his temples. He balled his hands into fists, felt the sharp bite of his fingernails into his palms as he turned around. “Ryoji.”

“What kind of creature could do that?” Ryoji’s voice was small and scared. “What kind of god could just take away the manifestation of humanity’s suffering?”

 _Obviously a very dangerous one_ , Minato thought, even as some extremely selfish ideas crept into his mind and battered it, prodded at his tongue and plucked at his hands. It was a bizarre act for a god, objectively bad but only questionably malicious: most gods thrived on the agony of humanity, used it to concentrate their power, manipulate their followers, make them dance and plead for deliverance or the end of the world-- 

They had to be missing something. They had to talk this through, try to investigate and figure out what happened, what it meant for the sanctity of the Seal, for the future of the universe. They had to figure out how to fight back. 

But.

If there was no Erebus, if Nyx wasn’t being called, if Ryoji was inside the Seal and it wasn’t collapsing, if Minato’s sanctified consciousness wasn’t shattering and the world wasn’t ending, then maybe--

maybe--

“Ryoji. Wait.” 

“If they managed that,” Ryoji continued, not listening, “then what else did they do? Are you hurt, Mina? Did they hurt you?”

“ _No_. Ryoji, _wait_.”

“I can’t!” Ryoji’s limbs trembled in time with his voice. “I can’t make sense of this. Me being here should mean that Nyx is here, too, but the Seal isn’t breaking. And I don’t even feel connected to her.”

He threw his hands up in frustration at the same moment Minato took a step towards him; one of his arms landed on Minato’s shoulder. 

They froze, didn’t dare to catch each other’s gazes or even breathe; Minato let the beautiful warmth of Ryoji’s palm soak into his marrow and waited for the Seal to shatter and the world to end. 

But everything stayed perfectly still.

They both looked up at the same time, stared at each other a moment, shaking in sync with each other’s fear, hope, and _want_. Ryoji tapped his fingertips against Minato’s skin one at a time, caught the line of his collarbone with his thumb and pressed down. A foreign little gasp escaped Minato’s mouth as his skin crackled with toasted heat, with the familiar, forgotten sensation of being touched. 

“Is Nyx--”

“--breaking through?” Ryoji’s eyes welled up, a smile blossoming across his face. “No. It’s only us.” 

He started to reach his other arm towards Minato, palm cupped in what looked like anticipation of a soft, slow cradle of Minato’s cheek. But if Nyx wasn’t splintering the Seal, if Ryoji really was there and the world wasn't ending, then Minato had absolutely no intention of moving slowly or softly. He leapt forward and tackled Ryoji, knocked their foreheads together as they fell, caught his hand between the back of Ryoji’s head and the floor as their noses touched, and framed Ryoji’s legs with his knees. 

“Only us,” Minato repeated, dripping the impossible, magical words onto Ryoji’s lips as he finally, _finally_ kissed him again.

Minato was already overwhelmed by the sudden return of his senses, but when Ryoji kissed him back, fervently and hungrily, he lit and burst a powderkeg inside Minato’s stomach. He took another kiss, flicked his tongue between Ryoji’s lips to part them, grabbed a fistful of the yellow scarf and tugged it off, flung it across the room as Ryoji shifted under him. 

“ _Mina_ ,” Ryoji breathed, reverent fingertips tracing down the curve of Minato’s back. “Mina, what’s gotten into you?”

“I missed you,” Minato said, planting the words in bites on Ryoji’s neck.


	2. a sliver of our impossible future

“Tired?” Ryoji asked with a grin, peeling himself off Minato’s heaving chest and stretching his arms in the air.

Minato was reluctant to admit it, but he was. Sleepiness was climbing its way back up his limbs, pawing at his eyelids and whispering the vacant hum of the Seal into his ears like a lullaby. His whole body felt weak, as leaden and dense as when he’d dragged himself through his last month on Earth, when his essence was drained but his stubborn heart kept beating until he fulfilled his last promise to his friends; he had to admit the feeling was probably a good sign. It likely meant he was still performing the Seal, meant that his soul was still stretched across the expanse of space even as his legs were threaded between Ryoji’s, even as his pulse was singing and his lungs were crackling from the way they’d filled the empty room with sound, with breath, with life. 

How long had it been since he and Ryoji woke up together? Hours? A day? When Minato was alive, his only solace from time’s relentless march was the Dark Hour; the glow of the Seal wasn’t green, but within it, time mimicked the same illusion of stillness. There was no sun by which they could mark its progression, just a generically bright facsimile of daylight that bounced around the room without origin. He tried to track the seconds by the thumping of his heartbeat -- but it wasn’t steady, wasn’t constant. When Ryoji smiled, it raced, yanking him forward into the next moment, into the next hitch of breath and pulse of muscle; when Minato held him, it slowed, stilled him against the heat in his bones, forced his inhales to thicken and turned his exhales into sighs. 

They’d never been allowed anything like this when they were alive. They were never afforded the luxury and privilege of intimacy, were never allowed to languish in desire without something ripping apart their joined hands--

“I’m not tired,” Minato protested, trying and failing to suppress a yawn. 

Ryoji smiled like he saw through the lie, but he played along anyway, standing up and pulling Minato to his feet. “Why don’t you eat something then? You might need to, now that you’re in a body again.”

Minato considered the suggestion. He supposed having his physical form back meant he could eat, if he wanted. His ravenous appetite had once been legendary, but it wasn’t among the sensations that had yet resurfaced; even so, giving eating a try couldn’t hurt. Minato’s cooking skills were basic, and the Seal didn’t come furnished with a stove or a stuffed pantry, but maybe that didn’t matter. Could he simply imagine some food and it would appear, the way he'd imagined the mirror? The way he and Ryoji apparently imagined their bed as they slept, while reality itself reshaped beneath them? 

No god would willingly let people grant their own wishes; no deity would ever allow such independence to flourish. Minato was certain that whomever brought this about had probably never heard the _names_ of the gods, let alone humanity calling out to them, didn’t know about the Seal and what it was holding off. But there was nothing they could do about that yet: not until they had more information, and not until Minato could figure out how to stay awake. 

He held out his hands, tilted his head, and watched as two sugar-crusted pastries appeared in his cupped palms. 

“Gekkou High melon bread? Really?” Ryoji chided, taking his share and watching intently as Minato took his first tiny bite. 

It was hard to focus on eating with Ryoji staring at him. Minato had forgotten just how intense Ryoji’s eyes could be: unblinking, dark, and impossibly wide. They didn’t make Minato nervous so much as they made him feel _seen_ , raw and exposed and shadowless. The first time Minato ever saw them closed was the first time they kissed, and it was only for a moment. He’d closed his own as he leaned in, kept them closed until they parted, and caught a momentary glimpse of thin eyelashes against flushed cheeks--

“Mina, you’re nodding off into your melon bread,” Ryoji teased, tilting Minato’s chin up and brushing a crumb of sugar off his nose. “You need to sleep.”

Ryoji seemed _so real_ , from the way his voice warmed Minato’s ears to the red half-moons Minato’s lips left behind on his neck. And god, he was tired. The Seal was demanding energy he didn’t have; his eyes were dry and his neck was like rubber. 

Maybe it would be okay to sleep for a little while. 

Minato looked at Ryoji and reached his hand towards him. “You’ll still--”

“--be here when you wake up? Yes.” Ryoji smiled again, but there was sadness lurking in its curves as he caught Minato by the wrist. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

_Yet_ , he didn’t say, but Minato heard it as he gave in, slumping against Ryoji’s shoulder and drifting off still standing up. 

***

Minato woke up tucked into their bed, covers nestled under his chin. Ryoji was sitting cross-legged on top of the quilt, stroking Minato’s hair with his thumb while reading a book.

Well. _Book_ wasn’t the right word for the monstrosity of yellowed parchment unspooling from Ryoji’s lap off the side of the bed. Scroll, perhaps, was more accurate. 

Minato sat up and pushed the covers down, leaned into Ryoji’s side, and squinted at the faded words that really didn’t seem like they should be written in Japanese. “ _Catasterismi_?” he asked. “What’s that?”

“Hiya,” Ryoji said, rolling the anachronism like a diploma and tucking it away under his pillow. “Just some research. You toss and turn in your sleep as much as ever, huh?”

Minato shrugged. Even when he was alive, sleeping had felt more like blinking than anything else. It wasn’t restful nor restless, peaceful nor tumultuous. But Ryoji had told him before how he tossed and turned, back when he was going by Pharos, manifesting in a body the same size as Minato’s was when Aigis sealed him away within it. Everything was different then: both he and Ryoji were still learning how to be human, testing out how it felt to smile, to shake hands, to spend time in another’s presence without wanting to run.  


“How long was I asleep?” he asked. 

“I’m not sure exactly,” Ryoji said slowly, like he was trying to lessen the blow. “I think maybe a couple of their days?”

 _Days_. The word slammed into Minato’s chest and rattled it, sent skitters of anxiety across his skin and chills into his joints. _Days_ was a dangerous amount of time to sleep when reality was unhinged: an unknown fraction of a miracle sacrificed, an unknown fragment of a battle conceded. He had to get stronger. Had to be able to stay awake longer, able to withstand the demands of the Seal for days and only _sleep_ for hours, not the other way around. 

“Were you able to see the Phantom Thieves?” Minato asked. 

“Yes,” Ryoji said, “but not clearly, at least not until they entered the palace. You meant it when you said you couldn’t look back. It’s nearly impossible to make Earth out from here.”

Minato nodded, but the surprise in Ryoji’s voice was jarring. Wasn’t that part of the deal, when he’d passed through the curtain of stars to stare directly into Nyx’s obsidian eyes, eviscerated her plumes of darkness with the golden beams of his bonds? When he’d refused Ryoji’s offer to erase his memories, to plunge him back into the inky fog of how things used to be? When they’d stolen their love from the clutches of the apocalypse and kept it alive while trading blows for the sake of everyone else's futures? 

What was Minato’s answer to life if it wasn’t to never look back? 

Ryoji should’ve understood that better than anyone in the universe. Ryoji, the being borne of Nyx and Erebus, was only _his_ because he refused to look back, refused to avert his eyes from the inevitability of death--

But maybe that wasn’t entirely fair. _Minato_ couldn’t look back, but Ryoji'd fought his fate for the right to do exactly that. He was born to become the Appriser, to ensure humanity received the death for which they begged, to wrench everyone’s necks towards their coffins and away from the memories that warmed their souls, that kept them moving forward. But when the bells of Tartarus freed him from his mortal prison, he’d first refused his transformation, creating and claiming his body and his life for one short winter. He taught himself how to look around the world instead of only looking forward into the Fall, how to accept his past and how to linger in the present--

“The palace was weird,” Ryoji continued. “I could only find Ren and Akechi, arguing in a safe room.”

“Wait. Akechi’s alive?” Minato asked.

Ryoji had the audacity to laugh. “I told you he wasn’t dead!”

“Yeah, but you also told me you couldn’t find him after the Thieves left Shido’s palace!” Minato protested. “I thought you were just -- whatever. We can talk about that later. Whose palace is it?” 

Ryoji shook his head. “I don’t know. But from the way those two were talking, it sounds like it’s someone Ren knows. A _person_ is somehow capable of bending reality to their own whims.”

Minato wasn’t surprised, unprecedented as the revelation was. The arrogance of knowing so little about the universe and remaking it anyway reeked of the same disgusting hubris that drove Ikutsuki into madness and Strega onto their knees. Of course it wasn’t a god silencing the screams of humanity’s pain, but one of the world’s broken people trying to heal their own wounds. That was the ultimate folly, wasn’t it? To try and end one’s pain instead of embracing it, instead of using it as a weapon, a forge, a ladder? 

Minato thought of Ren, of how heavy the warped reality had to weigh on his shoulders, how alone he would've felt if not for Akechi returning to him. How fractured he must have felt while Akechi was missing. Minato remembered all too well how it felt to watch Ryoji walk away knowing next time they'd meet, it would be for a fight. He didn't cry, but his chest tightened; the rope of their bond went taut and molten as the door closed and the clock ticked down to midnight. 

Minato was willing to bet that Ren didn’t cry, either. 

Ryoji was still talking; Minato straightened his posture and tried to focus. “Ren and Akechi agreed to re-infiltrate in a week. If we wait until then, and I make sure to watch the whole infiltration from start to finish, maybe we’ll get the answers we need.”

“Maybe?” Minato repeated. “Are we supposed to be satisfied with that? With waiting? Could we somehow--”

“--go to Earth ourselves?” Ryoji finished. “I know I couldn’t, before this happened. I was still with Nyx, and she moved around a lot, wandering the galaxy. I could always close my eyes and see everyone on Earth, but I don’t know how to actually get there.”

He paused a moment, lines of worry fording his face; Minato reached over and squeezed his knee. “What’re you thinking?”

Ryoji sighed. “I’m not sure how long I’d be able to hold onto myself there. But I’ll try, if you think that’s what we need to do.”

The lap of guilt in Minato’s stomach grew in size, crashed against the backside of his ribcage like a wave. “No,” he said. “We’ll find a way for me to go instead. I’m still a wildcard. I can fight through whatever this person has done.”

“You can’t!” Ryoji said, startling Minato with his forcefulness. “Mina, even the other Phantom Thieves don’t seem to be aware. Why else would they have been missing from the palace? There’s no telling what would happen to you if you left."

Minato tried to interject a note of protest, but Ryoji didn't give him a chance. "And how could you leave without breaking the Seal?" he continued. "Ren might not know it, but he needs the Seal. He needs _you_.”

Minato went quiet for a moment as he took in Ryoji’s words. The Seal had never felt like a cage before, never felt like a prison even when other world-ending battles were happening on Earth. It had always been his choice, his privilege, his honor as a wildcard, the prize he'd won from grasping the arcana of The Universe and seizing the future it concealed. He’d sworn his forever into vassalage of the future. 

Ryoji was right. Abandoning that would never, could never be the right choice. 

Maybe it wasn’t selfish after all, to stretch the limits of his energy like this, to linger in this sliver of a life he wasn’t entitled to and surely wouldn’t get to keep. If it wasn’t compromising the Seal, it was the right choice. And he and Ryoji always did have an uncanny ability to sense what the gods demanded of them and turn it on its head. Maybe there was a reason that Ryoji was there with him, some significance to his presence that they hadn’t figured out yet--

He stood, pulled Ryoji to his feet. “I won’t break the Seal,” he promised. “We’ll wait this out, together, for--”

“--as long as I can stay,” Ryoji finished, patching his lips with a smile that didn’t match the rest of his face. 

It was exactly what Minato was going to say, but once the words were strung between their mouths like holiday lights, they taunted him with their twinkling impermanence. They were on borrowed time, they were _always_ on borrowed time. Minato knew this, and yet hearing it spoken aloud brought an unfamiliar prickle into the corners of his eyes, sent a twitch across his lips that he couldn’t restrain. Before dying, he’d lived out his days barely feeling his emotions, burying them in an extra hour of sleep or burning them in the sparkle of Orpheus’s flames, but now--

“Oh, Mina. Don’t think like that,” Ryoji said, cupping Minato’s chin. “It’s you and me, okay? I think this is going to be the best thing we’ve ever done.”

Minato blinked, looked into Ryoji’s space-blue eyes and saw they were shiny with saltwater. But he was smiling, soft and adoring and genuine this time, and Minato couldn’t help but fall into his arms, couldn’t help but kiss him again. So this couldn’t last. So they couldn’t keep this physical proximity forever. Their bond--Minato’s strongest bond, the very bond that opened the door to the Seal--would only get stronger if they were allowed this time together, no matter if it was days or weeks or hours that awaited them. They were fighting, tightening the knot between their souls and setting it as an anchor upon the Seal, plating it in armor and preparing it to withstand whatever assault was approaching. Their bond was an act of revolution, and Minato would cherish it into eternity, keep it safe within his heart for as long as it existed. 

Ryoji broke their kiss, took Minato by the hips, and spun him around to face the barren room; Minato felt the vibrations of his throat as he spoke. “Want to decorate the place before you go back to sleep?”

It wasn’t the proposition he expected; Minato wondered if Ryoji would ever stop surprising him. 

He hoped he wouldn’t. 

“You want to decorate? Why?”

“I’ve never had a room to decorate before!” Ryoji said, squeezing him tighter. “C’mon, Mina, it’ll be fun!”

 _This can’t last_ , he thought again, but he’d never felt so happy. The guilt was still there, biting at his arms and scratching at his neck, but his heart was full, and it was calm; Orpheus and the rest of his menagerie still slept, as close to serene as Minato had ever felt them. 

They were doing the right thing. Ren wasn't going to lose; the Seal wasn’t going to break. 

Minato had to believe that. 

“What do you say?” Ryoji asked, pressing a kiss into his neck.

“I don’t care,” Minato said, but he was smiling, and even though Ryoji couldn’t see his face, the way his fingers curled around Minato’s hipbones told him he could tell. 

He let go a moment later, stepped past Minato and surveyed the room. Minato didn’t know the first thing about decor, but he knew Ryoji, knew how overly enthusiastic he could get and how the world ‘restraint’ wasn’t in his vocabulary. So he was _extremely_ suspicious of the twinkle in Ryoji’s eyes when he looked over his shoulder and grinned -- but the first thing that appeared was a simple facsimile of the dorm lounge’s sofa.

Minato relaxed a little. Ryoji had changed its fabric to a soft black suede, but it was otherwise identical to the real thing and entirely plain. 

“Do we need a table?” Minato asked, emboldened by the unexpected olive branch of normalcy. People had tables, right? He and Ryoji could drink coffee at a table if they had one, maybe, eat meals if they decided to conjure more food--

Ryoji nodded, and Minato willed a copy of the S.E.E.S. dining room table into existence, following the theme he naively thought they’d picked. He made the wood pale instead of dark, thinking it might match the pearly shimmer of the walls a little better, and was about to ask Ryoji about chairs when it disappeared, morphing into a family diner-style booth with pea-green cushions and a faux-mahogany canopy. 

“It looks just like the one in the Phantom Thieves’ favorite restaurant!” Ryoji crowed as Minato gaped; a beat later, his crowing turned to sputtering when Minato’s disapproval exploded from a simple dropped jaw into uncontrollable laughter. He sank down onto the overstuffed bench and choked on the giggles shaking his throat; Ryoji pushed him down against the vinyl and kissed them away. 

“I like hearing you laugh,” he murmured against Minato’s earlobe; Minato realized he’d chosen something ridiculous on purpose. 

_This man would do anything to make me smile_ , he thought, and kissed Ryoji harder. 

Eventually, they agreed on a low, square table with blue and yellow floor cushions; after Minato materialized them, the yellow ones sprouted suspicious, fluffy tassels, but that was otherwise the end of the debate. Minato figured they’d done enough for the time being and sank down on the couch, exhaustion hitting him like he’d run a marathon. But as soon as he sat, more things started appearing, and rapidly so: a little wooden desk stacked high with empty notebooks, a soaking bathtub filled with bubbles, the Whack-a-Mole machine from Game Panic, a wall-sized star-chart with scientific names in tiny script.

Minato sighed, bewildered and overwhelmed but nonetheless content. Ryoji caught his sleepy gaze, paused his wild imagination to cross the room and kiss the top of Minato’s head before he closed his eyes. 

***

Minato kept waking up in bed. 

As sweet as it was, imagining how Ryoji always picked him up and carried him from wherever he'd slumped into the warmth of their blankets, he couldn’t help but notice that this time, the bed had been rotated. It was inexplicably angled towards their table (which now sported a fancy tea set and a vase of flowers) and away from what had very much been a blank wall before he’d fallen asleep. 

A wall that had, somehow, become a fully-three dimensional grove of autumn-flamed Japanese maples.

Ryoji was laying on his stomach underneath their shady canopy, reading a book with a dozen more scattered around him. There was a notebook open at his side, a pencil behind his ear, and a new black sweater hugging his shoulders underneath the drape of the yellow scarf. Something soft and cool wisped over Minato’s cheek; Ryoji had even conjured a damn autumn breeze. 

Minato wrapped himself in a similar-looking blue sweater as he crossed the room, doing his best to dodge the trail of books that zig-zagged its way across the floor: mythology collections, astronomer's charts, geography books. He looked up for a moment and promptly tripped over an ancient-looking copy of _Georgics_ , kicked his foot into an equally-ancient looking copy of _Metamorphoses_ as he landed and sent it scrabbling across the floor -- but Ryoji didn’t even notice the commotion. His nose wrinkled like it did whenever he was concentrating too hard; the tip of his tongue peeked out from the corner of his mouth and he leaned closer to the page he was studying. It was so unfairly adorable, Minato thought he might just burst. 

He dusted himself off and crossed the room, sat down next to Ryoji and landed a playful tap against the back of his leg. “Really? You made trees?”

“I thought you might say that,” Ryoji replied, spinning a sheepish grin across the loom of his lips. He eased himself up from his stomach to his knees, materialized a simple black bookmark and tucked it between his pages. “But it’s just like Kyoto! I always wanted to go back to Kyoto with you, but we never got the chance.”

Minato let a little half-smile quirk up the corners of his mouth. “That would have been fun.”

Ryoji grinned back, snapping his book shut as he stood. “Yeah! If it was just you and me, we could’ve spotted some geisha! I bet it was Junpei who scared them away.”

Minato _seriously_ doubted that Junpei was solely to blame, but didn’t feel like arguing. He shook his head and went to lean back against the trunk of a tree; instead, Ryoji caught him, pulled them both to their feet, and held out a little box tied with blue ribbon.

“What’s this?” Minato asked. 

Ryoji took Minato’s hand in his, pressed the box into his palm and curled his fingers around it. “Open it.” 

Minato obeyed, tugging off the ribbon and flipping up the lid to reveal a replica of his old headphones and mp3 player, identical down to the frayed cotton lanyard and scuffed-up cord.

“I thought they might help you sleep better,” Ryoji said, an uncharacteristic shyness pinching at his cheeks. “Do you like them? Did I remember them right?”

 _They’re perfect_ , Minato thought. _You’re perfect_. 

He scooped up the headphones and fastened them over his ears, looked at the mp3 player and blinked, filling it instantly with the whole of his old discography. He turned the volume up, hit shuffle, and couldn’t help but close his eyes and tap his heel as a familiar guitar riff shook his eardrums. 

_God_ , had Minato missed music. When he was alive, he was never without his headphones; if they weren’t on his ears, they were hanging around his neck, a comforting weight and a promise of solace whenever he needed an escape. They didn’t work in the Dark Hour, but that was where Orpheus came in, humming in harmony with the beats of Minato’s heart as he fought. His music was different from Minato’s usual rock and rap: soft and nostalgic, sadder but no less determined. It was Orpheus who Minato tried to emulate when he played his violin in Music Club, and it was Orpheus who sang the last note his living ears ever heard, when he closed his eyes on the rooftop on March 5th, as the last of his energy was absorbed by the incomplete Seal, and his mind rode a stream of light years away from Earth towards some hidden part of the universe-- 

“There’s my Mina,” Ryoji said, so quietly Minato could barely hear him. 

He opened his eyes so he could bathe in the light of Ryoji’s soft expression, unhooked one headphone, and held it out for Ryoji to take.

“Just like back on the roof, huh?” Ryoji grinned, donning it immediately. “That made me so happy, you know. It was like you were telling me a secret.”

“Maybe I was,” Minato said, switching songs with another blink. “I never shared my music with anyone else.” 

Ryoji looked at their last blank wall and turned it into a giant window. Iwatodai’s cityscape blinked back at them, stretching languidly from the edge of the water beyond the shiny glass. His memory of the skyline was brighter than Minato’s, fuzzier in the outlines of the buildings but sharper in the glimmers of the bay. Ryoji always told him how he liked the way that light reflected off water. Minato hadn’t known it back then, but he agreed: he loved how something so ethereal could so clearly define the water’s boundaries, could sculpt its shape and change its color without weighing it down. They were perfect for each other, the light and the water: they were one even when they couldn’t embrace, combined in a way that was theirs alone. Brilliant. Unbreakable and untouchable. 

_Just like us._

“How long did I sleep this time?” he asked, reluctantly breaking their silence but not their connection, nuzzling against Ryoji’s collarbones as Ryoji buried a kiss in his hair. 

“Not so long,” Ryoji said. “You didn’t miss much.”

 _I missed time with you_ , Minato wanted to argue; instead, he looked around the room, took in all the ways it had changed while he’d slept. The truly startling thing, moreso even than the grove of trees, was just how many books Ryoji had amassed. His collection had been unruly before, but now there were piles in every corner, towers against every wall; the little desk was surrounded by a wobbly moat of books, tipped like dominoes in a u-shape around its legs. There were some textbooks and some paperbacks, but mostly antiques that looked on the verge of disintegrating, scrolls and parchment scraps and old leather tomes like the ones Minato had tripped over. 

It was like Ryoji had ransacked the Library of Alexandria.

“You’ve been busy,” Minato said, raising his eyebrows in a mixture of amusement and disbelief. “Are you trying to solve the mystery by yourself?”

“Which one?” Ryoji asked, no trace of teasing in his voice. 

Minato was moderately alarmed. “Is there more than one?”

“Of course.” Ryoji turned Minato back towards the window, laced his fingers together across his ribs. “The universe is full of mysteries, Mina. What fun would it be not to try and solve them all?”

***

Coffee quickly became Minato's favorite alarm. Ryoji was quite the barista, imagining them all kinds of coffee creations, rousing Minato with their sweet scents and their steam: cappuccinos with 3D foam art, mochas with three different flavors of chocolate drizzle, tiny shots of espresso over enormous scoops of vanilla ice cream. Minato wasn’t nearly so creative; when he brewed the coffee, he made it black. Ryoji never complained, and Minato pretended not to notice when he slipped spoonfuls of sugar into his cup.

But this time, the smell was disorienting, Minato was groggy, and the disarray of their room had worsened _again_ since he’d last been conscious. The energy of the Seal was frenetic and shaky, the books had continued to multiply and were strewn about even worse than usual, like someone had repeatedly, frantically dug through the stacks. There were empty mugs Ryoji had forgotten to dematerialize stacked next to their table, which was itself half-covered with some sort of musical score, of all things. Ryoji was sitting on the (semi-)clear side, scribbling intently onto what looked like another star chart, like the one that hung on their wall but older, burnt at the edges and wrinkled in the middle.

Minato climbed out of bed with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape, made his way slowly across the room and sank down onto a blue cushion. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“G’morning,” Ryoji said, conjuring and pushing a cinnamon-dusted latte across the table without looking up. “I have to tell you something, and it’s important, but give me a minute, okay? I need to write this down before I forget.” 

Minato accepted the mug wordlessly, knowing that “a minute” in Ryoji-speak meant he’d be waiting awhile -- not long enough that he could go back to sleep, but long enough that his coffee would grow cold if he waited for Ryoji to start drinking it. He looked around the room and decided on a project. The books were absolutely out of control; they needed to be contained. Minato held out his hand and swept it over the open space next to the bed, conjuring a bookshelf as tall and deep as it was imposing, with plenty of space for Ryoji’s ever-growing collection. He left his blanket at the table and made several rounds of the room, holding his coffee in one hand while collecting the clutter with the other. When everything was gathered, he got to work shelving: books were arranged by topic, then author; notebooks and sketchbooks were stacked by color and size. The scrolls--it was baffling still that there were multiple scrolls--were cajoled into shaky pyramids, the maps folded into squares and piled with the miscellanea. 

“What are you doing with all this stuff, anyway?” Minato asked, returning to the table and his blanket. It wasn't the first time he'd asked that question, and every time, Ryoji gave the exact same answer--

“I’ll tell you later,” Ryoji said, finally looking up. His expression was startlingly sad. He had dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks looked hollow; his arms were trembling from fear or too much caffeine. Minato wasn't sure which. 

His eyes widened at the sight of the bookshelf, though, and Minato couldn’t help but feel a little smug. “Surprise.”

“Mina! That looks great!” Ryoji exclaimed, folding up his chart and carrying it to the new shelf. He didn’t put it in the stack Minato would have chosen--was a stack of atlases really the best place for a star chart?--but at least it made it onto a shelf. A small victory. 

“So what did you want to tell me?” Minato asked, refilling their empty mugs with black coffee.

Ryoji closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. “It’s a Persona user who did this. Maruki, Ren’s therapist. He’s not a wildcard, but his Persona is special, and his grip on reality is really strong.”

“Okay,” Minato said. “So it’s as we suspected.”

“It’s worse than we suspected,” Ryoji said. “The other Phantom Thieves were able to snap out of it, but no one else has. Not even--”

“--other Persona users,” Minato said as his heart sank. A part of him had expected this, but for as long as they hadn’t discussed the possibility, he’d let himself pretend it wasn’t true, let himself imagine Mitsuru ordering her Shadow Operatives into action, storming into Tokyo to back the wildcard up in his fight.

Ryoji nodded. “I focused really hard the moment the Thieves left the palace, and found Yukari for a second, before everything went fuzzy. She was with her father.”

Minato’s mouth dropped open. “He can bring back the dead?”

“Not exactly. But it’s no accident that Erebus disappeared, or that Nyx’s power is weakening,” Ryoji said, gripping his mug and spinning it in a circle. “His changes to reality are purposeful and targeted: to alter cognition around people’s traumatic memories. He’s taking away the sources of humanity’s pain, one individual cognition at a time.”

Something twisted inside Minato’s chest and it _hurt_ ; Orpheus turned in his sleep and knocked against Minato’s deflated lungs. He thought of the harrowing nights and jubilant days that had welded his soul to his friends’. The chains of his bonds jangled in his chest; they’d never sounded so hollow, so weak.

They were forgetting him--

“Mina,” Ryoji said, voice dark, eyes heavy. “Does that remind you of anything?”

Minato’s throat went dry. 

He started to shake his head, but Ryoji stopped him, took his hand and folded it over in his own. 

“You can say it,” he said. “I know you’re thinking the same thing as me.” 

“Memories are ambiguous,” Minato murmured, reciting the words Ryoji had spoken on New Year’s Eve, the ones chiseled into his mind like an epitaph for the Fall he’d prevented. “Old ones can be replaced with new ones, creating a new reality. Don’t you want to end all your friends’ pain and suffering?”

Ryoji nodded again. “If Ren loses, and Maruki's reality actualizes, he'll do what you stopped me from doing -- for everyone. The last of the voices calling for Nyx will fade away, and she’s probably going to vanish, just like Erebus did. And if that happens--”

“--you and I will disappear, too,” Minato said. “My bonds will break. S.E.E.S won’t have happened. Aigis won’t have sealed you within me. We’ll both be erased from cognition completely.”

Anger danced across Ryoji’s face, seized his cheeks and flushed them, narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow. “Nevermind me. Mina, if you disappear, so will your sacrifice. So will the Seal.”

Minato wanted to fight back on that point, because there was no _nevermind_ when it came to Ryoji, but he knew Ryoji wouldn’t indulge him in a sentimental argument. And the words were forcing their way up his throat too quickly to stifle anyway, scraping at the backs of his teeth until he let them out. They were demanding his voice; demanding his honesty.

“But he’s going to die someday,” Minato added, clenching his jaw as he stood and paced the room. “When he does, his reality will end. All of humanity’s pain will come flooding back, and Nyx and Erebus will return. And I won’t be there to keep them apart. If Ren doesn't win, he's going to end the world.”

“It matters not who you are. Death awaits you,” Ryoji said, sounding so much more human and fragile than when he’d promised the same as Nyx swallowed him whole.

Minato’s short life was scarred by loss. He’d fumbled through most of his years with dulled emotions and a vacant heart; it wasn’t until Ryoji escaped from his confinement with Orpheus that Minato learned to feel at all. And when he’d heard Ryoji utter those words, it wasn’t fear that struck him in his chest, but understanding, gratitude, acceptance for the miracle taking shape within his mind’s arcana. It was thanks to those words that he’d fully understood what it was he had to do.

“Am I making this worse?” Ryoji asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “We both know I’m not supposed to be here. Mina, what if I’m--”

“Stop.” Minato squeezed his hand and refused to finish his dangling sentence. “If what you said is true, the Seal should have already broken. The Seal is my soul and it’s built from my bonds -- bonds that weren't formed in this alternate reality. Right?”

Ryoji said nothing, just squeezed Minato's hand again and refused to look up. Minato felt heat rising on his cheeks, felt his pulse whirring, felt his skin tingling and his muscles tensing, felt so much emotion he thought his blood might boil from its energy alone--

“The Seal hasn't broken _because_ you're here. Because we're defying fate together and strengthening our bond when it should have been the first to disappear. Ryoji, you’re my miracle,” Minato said, soft and worshipful. “You’ve always been my miracle. That's why you're here. You're keeping me alive until Ren wins.” 

Ryoji stood, wrapped Minato up in his arms, and kissed him, as bittersweet and tender as their very first time.


	3. wait for me

“What’s something you always wanted to do?” Minato asked. “Something we never got a chance to do together back on Earth.”

Ryoji tilted his head to the side. The sadness of their revelation still clung to his face, but a little curiosity crept into his expression. “Why are you asking me that now?”

“Because I don’t want to waste any more time,” Minato said, downing the rest of his coffee and dematerializing the cup. “If we’re biding our time until Ren has his fight, then we should have some fun while I’m awake, don’t you think?”

It felt wrong to suggest something as audacious as _having fun_ when their little pocket of the universe was leaden with its inevitable ending; Minato wanted nothing more than to bottle it, keep it burrowed in his heart for after Ren won. But he didn’t want to spend their last days together mourning its disappearance. For as long as they shared the Seal, Minato refused to lament. He would treat Ryoji’s presence like the miracle it was -- something to be celebrated, to be enjoyed, to be embraced.

He’d have an eternity to grieve once Ren won. 

Ryoji was still looking at him like he wasn’t sure how to respond, but his eyes were brightening. “Well, there’s lots of things we didn’t get to do,” he said, voice perking up with each word. “Going back to Kyoto, camping, climbing Mt. Fuji--”

“Absolutely not,” Minato interjected.

“--stargazing, visiting Tokyo and Osaka and Sapporo, and -- ooh, Mina, we should go on a proper date!” Ryoji grinned, a real one, looking at Minato like he was a prize in the arcade. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“What’s a _proper_ date?” Minato asked, squirming under the sudden intensity of his gaze. He was slightly scared of the answer, but Ryoji’s expression wasn’t sad anymore. So what was a little trepidation for the sake of that smile? 

Ryoji spread his arms out, gesturing wildly around the room. “You know, like in the movies! We’ll go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, then go get a drink at an even fancier bar, and then I’ll whisper something like _shall we get out of here?_ into your ear once I can’t stand waiting to kiss you any longer.”

Lust blossomed in Minato’s stomach as Ryoji’s voice dipped into its lower octave. “You could kiss me right now,” he said, stepping forward as Ryoji caught him by the hips and spun him around.

“Be patient,” Ryoji chided, pressing a teasing little peck to his jaw as he stilled Minato against him. “C’mon, let’s go on a date. You can pick which restaurant we’ll imagine.”

“Hagakure,” Minato declared immediately, more to draw another smile out of Ryoji than out of an actual craving for ramen.

Although a Hagakure Bowl did sound tasty, now that he was thinking about it--

“ _Mina_ ,” Ryoji whined. “That’s the opposite of fancy.”

Minato grinned, rotating back around beneath Ryoji’s hands to face him. “Beef bowl shop?”

Ryoji wrinkled his nose; Minato leaned in and kissed it. “Fine. Didn’t you invite every girl at Gekkou to some fancy restaurant on top of a hotel?” he asked. “Take me there.” 

Ryoji beamed, blinked, and conjured a candlelit two-top in front of their window. The view changed behind the glass, stretching over the Moonlight Bridge to Port Island from the mainland instead of the school. A string of twinkling holiday lights appeared on the window's edges, and the table's decor was, strangely, Christmas-themed as well: two little sprigs of juniper, a small red candle ringed by a miniature pine wreath. 

“Isn’t it January in their reality?” Minato asked, letting Ryoji lead him by the hand to his seat.

“Yes. It’s almost February,” Ryoji said, pulling out Minato’s chair and ignoring the eyeroll his chivalry earned. “But it can be any day we want here. And I’ve never celebrated Christmas Eve before.” 

Minato thought back to his last Christmas Eve. He’d spent it alone in his dorm, rejecting text message invitations to various celebrations for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. Christmas Eve was meant to be a romantic holiday, and until everything snapped into place between his blade and Ryoji’s throat, Minato had truly believed himself incapable of falling in love. He cherished the members of S.E.E.S. like they were the family he’d lost, but couldn’t imagine kissing any of them. He'd tried to date a few friends from school: said all the right lines to make them smile like they saw the future in his eyes, took the bonds they shared and tried to sculpt them like clay into shapes they weren't meant to take. It left him feeling the same way each time: empty, hollow, like maybe love was just something he wasn’t meant to experience, like all the bonds in the world weren’t enough to mend whatever was fundamentally broken inside his heart’s deepest chambers. 

But when he’d looked into Ryoji’s eyes on New Year’s Eve, alight with the peridot glow of the impending Dark Hour, everything finally made sense. Love wasn’t some new flame he was unable to spark; it was already loose in his veins, marching in his pulse and flushing under his skin, cupping his bonds in its smoking palms and waiting for him to remember its name--

“I’ve never celebrated either,” Minato said, brushing the thoughts out of his eyes as he sat. “So what kind of food does this place serve?”

Ryoji shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never eaten here before.”

Minato blinked in surprise. “Then why did you always--”

“--invite people here? Because it looked so beautiful.” Ryoji smiled again, wistful and soft this time. “From the street, the whole floor is lit up like a stage, and you can see the silhouettes of everyone at their tables. I was trying so hard to be human, but sometimes things didn’t make sense. So I liked watching the people who ate here. It was comforting, somehow, even if I was far away.”

Minato nodded, tasting the bitter ghost of loneliness in Ryoji’s voice. How familiar it felt, sinking into his stomach and muddying his gut. He remembered all the times he’d walked by glowing windows and seen strangers' lives unfolding behind them, remembered reaching out towards his own desires and finding them torpefied. Eventually, he’d stopped reaching, stopped looking, and shuffled through a muted decade until his chance return to Iwatodai, until Orpheus shattered his armor and Thanatos shattered Orpheus, ripping his heart open and forcing it to beat-- 

“I always wanted to invite you here, you know,” Ryoji continued. “I knew I loved you as soon as I saw you, even if I couldn’t remember why, at first. But I also used to feel so scared when I looked at you. So I didn’t dare to dream you loved me back, even when I swore I could feel it--” 

Minato stood up and walked to Ryoji’s side of the table, wrapping his arms around Ryoji’s neck and burying his hands in his yellow scarf.

“Shall we get out of here?” he whispered. 

Ryoji tilted his head backwards into Minato’s chest and grinned. “That’s supposed to be my line. And we haven’t even eaten yet!”

Minato smiled against Ryoji’s ear. “I know,” he said, “but I can’t stand waiting to kiss you any longer.”

***

The Seal’s demand for rest drummed against his temples, persistent and angry, but for once, Minato couldn’t sleep. 

_It’s almost February._

The gravity of those words hadn’t registered right away, not until hours after they'd been spoken. Not until Ryoji laid his head against Minato's chest, until Minato closed his eyes and found an inescapable realization lurking behind his eyelids: it was almost time for Ren to face Maruki. His evidence was scant, but his heart was certain; if Minato knew anything about the limited patience of gods, he knew that _time_ was not among the luxuries they granted the wildcards who challenged them. 

And Ren _would_ face Maruki, and he would win. Minato refused to consider the alternative. A wildcard would never bow to a warped reality, would never accept subservience and lies no matter what they had to lose by rebelling. That was another thing about gods -- they never went down without leaving behind scars. There was always something to lose. Something to grieve. 

Minato wondered what it was for Ren; from the bits and pieces of Ryoji’s stories, he had a guess. 

But Ren would still fight, and he would win, and Minato and Ryoji would have the Seal ready for reality’s return. Eternity would engulf them sooner than he could imagine; grief would find them faster than he was ready to accept. As if anyone was ever _ready_ for grief. For death. As if Minato was ready to die when he made his choice to perform the Seal -- but he still went alone to face Nyx willingly, happily, even proudly. And he would do the same when Ren won, and the Seal reclaimed his flesh and his senses--

But would Ryoji’s voice still reach him, after everything reverted? Would he still call out to Minato and tell him more stories? Reminisce on their conjured machinations? Finally admit what it was he’d been working on the whole time they shared the Seal? 

Or would Ryoji even remember their time together? Would Minato? When everything reverted, would Minato forget how Ryoji felt in his arms? The glimmer in his eye before letting his imagination run wild? All the firsts they'd claimed outside the watchful eyes of fate? 

Would they ever--

“I can hear your heartbeat,” Ryoji said softly. “It’s nice.”

 _Is it fading?_ Minato almost asked. _Is it slowing down?_

Instead, he curled a lock of Ryoji’s hair around his thumb, brushed his fingers over the lines of his forehead and hummed a little sound of affirmation. Ryoji shifted against him, exhaling against his skin before sitting up. His eyes were soft and his cheeks were pink, and when he reached out to squeeze Minato’s knee, he smiled. He was as handsome as he was beautiful: all the promises in his gaze, the love and the heartache and the grace in his upturned lips--

“What’s on your mind?” Ryoji asked. “You can tell me.” 

Minato shook his head. “Is it that--” 

“--obvious? Sleepy Mina, _not_ falling asleep the moment his head hits the pillow?” Ryoji laughed. “Obvious is an understatement. Are you okay?” 

Minato sighed, pulling himself up against their headboard and stretching his arms overhead. “I’m okay. I just can’t clear my head.” 

Ryoji leaned down, picked up their sweaters off the floor and pulled his back over his head. “I have an idea. Up for one more adventure tonight?”

Minato nodded, donning his sweater and watching as Ryoji blinked away their forgotten restaurant table, window wall and all, in favor of an elaborate reconstruction of Naganaki Shrine's little playground, shrouded in shadow and bathed in lantern light. 

“I wasn’t too good at sleeping when I was human,” Ryoji said, climbing out of bed and tugging on Minato’s hand until he joined him. He wrapped them both in dark wool coats and led Minato towards the slide. “I came here a lot. Spent a lot of Dark Hours here. Isn’t it peaceful?”

“It is.” Minato nodded. “I liked it here, too. I had a friend -- we used to sit on that bench over there and talk. He died a couple weeks before I did.”

“What was his name?” Ryoji asked, squeezing Minato’s hand.

Minato squeezed back. “Akinari,” he said. “He was really wise. The last time I saw him, he told me that the meaning of our lives was something that we make but don’t see.” 

It was strange, saying that out loud. Minato’s bond with Akinari had always been private; their friendship had existed entirely on that park bench, sequestered away from the battles of S.E.E.S. and the bustle of Gekkoukan. Minato closed his eyes and remembered how the cold January sun felt against his face, remembered Akinari fading away in its frosty glare and the weight of the worn leather notebook left behind in his hands. It was far from the first time Minato lost someone, but it _was_ the first time he’d seen someone smile as they left, proud of the mark they’d left on another soul, looking skyward instead of inward or down at the ground. It was a revelation that changed Minato, that he carried and embodied as he tilted his own face towards the light on March 5th--

Ryoji pinned a soft kiss to his ear but didn’t say anything; Minato took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and kept talking. 

“You were already gone, waiting for the next full moon to call Nyx, and I missed you so much, I--” he said, pausing as his voice threatened to break. “But when I heard him say that, I understood what was coming. I still had a lot to figure out, but I knew how everything would end.”

“And you never looked back,” Ryoji murmured. 

Minato nodded. “And I never will.”

Ryoji fell silent, materializing a small notebook and kneeling to scribble madly in it. “Hang on,” he said. “You just -- I thought of something, give me a second.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what you’ve been working on?” Minato asked for maybe the twentieth or thirtieth time, looking across the room to Ryoji’s desk, to his ever-growing stacks of notebooks and ancient tomes. “You always say you’ll tell me later, but--”

 _But we both know later is almost gone, don’t we?_ he barely stopped himself from saying.

“--I never do?” Ryoji finished, standing up and tucking the notebook into his back pocket. “I’ll show you soon. I promise.”

“Okay. Soon,” Minato repeated, hoping that _soon_ would come before eternity swallowed it. He took Ryoji’s hand again, looked around the playground and paused on something new, just past the slide. “Did you add a swingset?” 

“I’ve always wanted to try one!” Ryoji said, pulling Minato towards it. “You can go first. I’ll push you!”

Minato did as he was told, sitting and pumping his legs as Ryoji’s first push propelled him into the air. Wind rushed past his ears and tousled his hair; he watched it skate over the tops of Ryoji’s ridiculous maple trees and smiled into it.

What a world they’d created. What a nonsensical and perfect sliver of the universe they’d pulled from nothing but their own minds. 

Minato wouldn’t fight back when it collapsed, but _god_ , would he miss it after it was gone. 

“How were you able to talk to me?” he asked. “Before Maruki’s reality.”

“What do you mean how?” Ryoji asked, flattening his palms against Minato’s back and landing another gentle push. “I just talked to you because I missed you, and I figured you were probably out in space somewhere, same as me. I didn’t know if you’d be able to hear me, but I had to try.”

“But it didn’t count as Nyx breaking through the Seal?” 

“I don’t think so,” Ryoji said, “because it wasn’t Nyx. It was me.” 

He caught the swing by its chains, twisted them in a helix and sent Minato spinning before he could respond. “I’m still me, even though I’m not supposed to be,” he continued. “Nyx was supposed to fully reabsorb me, remember? But she didn’t. Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” 

Ryoji grabbed hold of the swing again, twisted its chains so Minato was facing him, gripped them over his head hard enough that they shook. “Because of you, Mina. Because of how long I shared your heart. You kept a part of me that she can’t ever consume.” 

“Does that scare you?” Minato asked, drawing lemniscates on the ground with his toes.

Ryoji leaned in and kissed Minato’s forehead. “Never,” he said. “I love knowing part of me belongs to you. And I have a piece of you, too, you know.”

“You do, do you?” Minato teased, even as his heart sang out in exultation. 

_You do._

_You always have and you always will._

Ryoji smiled like he saw right through him, trailed his fingertips up the slope of Minato’s chin and cradled it. “Of course I do. Maybe that’s why becoming the Seal didn’t sap all of your consciousness. Why you could hear me and respond when I called out to you. Because of how much we love each other, you know?”

Minato lingered a moment, leaned his cheek into the pillowy softness of Ryoji’s words and the heat of his bent knuckles, before looking up at Ryoji with a wicked grin on his face.

“Maybe,” he said, standing up and twirling Ryoji around into the seat of the swing. 

“ _Maybe_? Mina, that deserves more than a maybe!” Ryoji protested, incredulous, as Minato sent the swing soaring forward. “That was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever said to you.”

Minato slowed the swing and held it still, wrapped his arms around Ryoji and rested his hands on the knobs of his shoulders. He nipped a kiss into Ryoji’s neck, and despite himself--despite everything--he laughed. 

***

Ren was fighting. 

Minato couldn’t see him, but he could feel the battle, rocking through the Seal and quaking around the airless space surrounding it. Surrounding him. His eyes were struggling through every blink, and the Seal’s etiolated humming was back in his ears, quiet but creeping up its intensity with every passing beat.

Soon all his senses would once again be muzzled with sleep.

Soon their bodies would again vanish, and Ryoji would again be exiled from the Seal, banished from their impossible future back into whatever realm of the galaxy he used to wander.

But for the moment, Ryoji was asleep. Actually, peacefully _asleep_ , for the first time since they’d woken up together, curled up like a cat under their patchwork quilt. His yellow scarf dangled from the headboard, and his long eyelashes bunched up against his cheeks. Minato climbed out of bed and watched as Ryoji rolled over, sagging into the indent he'd left behind; nostalgia for mornings they’d never seen pinched his nerves. But no matter how loud its siren sang, Minato's resolve was louder. Their fight was over. Reality was in Ren’s hands; the Seal was waiting for his victory, and Minato’s bones were heavy, aching for rest. Eternity was climbing up the horizon, and yet--

He looked around the Seal and was startled to find it a wreck; for a moment, he thought it was already crumbling. But upon further inspection, the damage was man-made, by one man in particular: the epicenter of the disaster was Ryoji’s bookshelf. Its neat stacks were toppled, all his notebooks and sketchbooks were scattered across the floor, reams of their pages torn out and crumpled. Dozens of pencils were whittled down to nubs, collected in an empty mug stained with the dregs of a languid moment, sipped like time wasn’t passing.

 _No wonder he’s sleeping_ , Minato thought, sitting on one of Ryoji’s yellow cushions and holding the other tightly to his chest. He conjured two cups of coffee and waited for the steam to reach Ryoji’s nose and rouse him. A lone notebook rested on their table, splayed open on its spine, and Minato was overcome with the urge to peek--

“It’s happening,” Ryoji said, knocking his knee into Minato’s as he sat. “Are you--”

“--scared? No.” Minato shook his head and pushed a mug towards Ryoji. “I’m so tired. And I’m going to miss you.”

Ryoji took the cup in his hands, drank the whole steaming coffee in one gulp. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

Minato didn’t know what else to say, so he conjured them melon bread while Ryoji refilled their coffees. They ate and drank in silence, and Minato tried his hardest to focus on the taste of the flaky pastry and the burn of the coffee against his tongue, on anything that caressed one sense instead of enveloping all five, anything that kept him tethered to his body while he was still inside it. He would let the Seal absorb it the moment it was time, but no sooner--

Ryoji scooted closer and took Minato’s hands in his. “I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it. So I have something to show you now. Do you want to see it?”

Minato nodded, Ryoji blinked, and their room disappeared, the walls and the floors and every piece of the solace they’d created. Their floor cushions morphed into a floating white blanket, and in every direction, they were surrounded by stars. Their sparkle was like nothing Minato had ever seen, but he’d felt their spirit once before, when he ascended into Nyx’s aura and called upon the arcana of the Universe. Then, too, they had trilled a bell-toned tune, splattered his countenance with their evanescent heat; he’d felt velvet against his skin and tasted copper in his mouth-- 

Ryoji pulled Minato into his arms, wrapped his arms around his waist and sat up straight. “This was my view, right before I woke up here with you.”

Minato leaned back against Ryoji’s chest as he took in the ephemeral sight. Looking at the stars was like watching the past collide with the future, the glimmer of birth shining against the promise of death. It was everything Minato took into his soul when he performed the Seal, when he bound his wrists and ankles with the ropes of his bonds, when he spread his limbs wide across the golden gates of the stars. 

“It’s beautiful,” he breathed.

“Mhm.” Ryoji nodded, tightening his grip on Minato and resting his chin on top of his head. “And it changes with the passage of time on Earth. I can see different stars at different times of the year. And it’s always in motion -- I make sure to wave at all the comets when they fly by, and all the asteroids.” 

That was so Ryoji, Minato had to laugh. “I wish I could see this, too,” he said, more plaintive than covetous. “It’s beautiful.”

“Well, of course you can’t see it.” Ryoji kissed the top of Minato’s head. “Want to know why?”

He tucked his chin into the crook of Minato’s neck, tilted Minato’s chin up before reaching out and tracing one finger across the sky. Minato watched as he sketched glowing lines between the gleams, coaxing a little rhombus out of four stars before drawing a straight line up and tapping against the brightest one for miles.

“That constellation is called Lyra,” Ryoji said, dotting a soft kiss against Minato’s temple. “And it’s yours.”

Somewhere inside Minato’s heart, Orpheus stirred, plucked a melancholic note and hummed into the staff of his ribs; Minato mimicked the sound, sent it low and sweeping like a prayer towards the star behind Ryoji’s fingertip. _Lyra_. It felt like home melting into his tongue, shimmying down his throat and saturating his blood--

“I read about how, when Orpheus died, the Muses kept his head but put his lyre in the sky. And it made me think: I talked to you all the time, but you didn’t always answer, and I never knew why,” Ryoji continued. “But I think I get it now. You only heard me when I could see Lyra. So I think that’s where Erebus and Nyx were destined to meet, and where the Great Seal was always destined to keep them apart. Where you were always destined to be.”

“All those old books,” Minato said, awestruck and in love and slowly coming apart. “All those star charts. The maps. You were looking for me.”

Ryoji brushed a hand against his cheek and slid it down his neck, leaving contrails of heat on Minato’s skin. “And I swear to you, Mina, I will find you.”

Minato twisted to face Ryoji, taking both of his hands into his as he spoke. “But you can’t try to--”

“--free you. I know. But I gave up on you once,” Ryoji said, eyes full of stardust, voice steely with purpose. “I’m never, _ever_ going to do that again. Maybe it won’t be like this, but when I find you again, it’ll be you and me, together until eternity ends. Like we’re supposed to be. I promise.”

“How?” Minato asked. 

“I don’t know yet,” Ryoji admitted. “But I’m going to figure it out. You chose the impossible fight and you won. You chose _me_. Now it’s my turn to choose you, okay?”

“I love you,” Minato whispered, closing the last of the distance between them. “I love you so much, Ryoji.”

Ryoji hummed into the part of Minato’s lips before nudging them apart. "I love you too." 

They fell backwards against the blanket, sparkling and infinitesimal beneath the celestine canopy, and poured the last of their borrowed energy into each other. They laid together, hands entwined and limbs tangled as their heartbeats slowed, watching the stars inch like caterpillars across the sky. Minato’s breaths slowed down, his vision dulled and the stars’ reflection dimmed in the perfect slate of Ryoji’s eyes. Everything was calm, and everything was still--

“I have to go,” Ryoji said, nudging Minato’s shoulder with his head like a cat. “The wildcards are about to win.”

Minato wrapped his arms around Ryoji as tightly as he could, took another string of defiant kisses until he lost feeling in his lips and his hands. “I love you,” he said again, the last words left on his tongue before it went limp. 

“I love you, too,” Ryoji murmured. “Always.” 

He disentangled his limbs from Minato’s, and as soon as he did, Minato’s body went numb; he felt his tangibility eroding and his energy condensing into a familiar, tingling null. His eyes closed, his ears lost the drum of Ryoji’s heartbeat underneath the reverberating roar of the void. 

“Sleep well, my Mina,” Ryoji said, voice staticky and far away, carving its final notes from somewhere outside the encroaching emptiness. “I’m right behind you. Don’t look back, okay?” 

Minato nestled the vow into his heart and fell back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so, so much for sticking with me 'til the end of this fic, and for all of your support on the first two chapters -- i seriously can't express enough how much it meant to me. 
> 
> i have the very beginnings of an idea for a sequel kicking around in my head, but it may be awhile before i'm able to get it written. i hope to see you all again when that day comes, though!
> 
> thank you again ♥


End file.
